Canadians Edge Closer To Letting Quebec Go

Mood Is Shifting Toward Secession

August 27, 1989|By Howard Witt, Chicago Tribune.

TORONTO — This summer a theater director in Saskatoon staged a neatly Canadian production of Shakespeare`s ``Romeo and Juliet`` by casting the warring Capulets and Montagues as, respectively, French- and English-speakers.

The oddest thing about the idea was that no one had thought of it before. No other national wound in Canada`s 121-year history has so stubbornly resisted healing than the split between this country`s two founding cultures, the English and the French. No other fight has been so all-consuming, and so debilitating.

Now once again, the French-speaking citizens of Quebec are actively debating, as they did throughout the turbulent 1970s, whether they are unhappy enough with the rest of Canada to separate and form their own country.

On Sept. 25, they will signal their desire in a provincial election that pits the governing Liberal Party against the staunchly separatist and newly resurgent Parti Quebecois.

But something in Canada has changed this time around.

In the 1970s, the prospect of such a grievous secession by Quebec provoked widespread alarm and distress in English Canada. A single, anguished question-``What does Quebec want?``-came to symbolize Canada`s desire to accommodate its most restive province.

French and English both were declared Canada`s official languages. More federal jobs were reserved for Francophones. Many English parents began sending their children to French-immersion schools. And the federal government of then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau encouraged a tolerant, bilingual vision of the country.

Today, however, many English Canadians are asking a sharper question:

``Who cares?`` Increasingly, they perceive Quebec, the nation`s second largest and wealthiest province, as greedy, insensitive and ultimately implacable.

``There is a sense now towards Quebec that, `If you want to go, go. Don`t threaten us anymore,` `` said Debra Berk, an Anglophone who grew up in Montreal and now works for a national tourism association in Ottawa. ``It used to be only the Western rednecks who said things like that.``

``Most Canadians,`` Toronto resident Steven Gurian wrote recently to the Toronto Star, ``believe that enough has been done to appease French Canadian insecurities and now view French Canadians as not wanting to belong to Canada.``

A national Gallup Poll in July found that 28 percent of Canadians think Quebec should separate and form its own country. It was the strongest support for separation since Gallup began asking the question 20 years ago.

Such expressions of hostility have provoked unprecedented forecasts of doom from some of Canada`s leading opinion-makers.

``We are beginning to see a reversal of the vision we have seen emerge in the last 20 years,`` New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna warned in an April speech in Montreal. ``The province of Quebec is increasingly looking to become unilingual French and the other provinces unilingual English-to hell with minorities.``

Not everyone is so distressed, of course. Parti Quebecois leader Jacques Parizeau, who has said that a vote for his party is a vote for Quebec`s eventual separation from Canada, was delighted by the Gallup Poll.

``We`re coming to the point where both groups realize how hard it is to live together in the same country,`` Parizeau said.

Much of the immediate discord can be traced to Quebec`s controversial sign law, which sharply restricts the use of English on store signs. Last December, Canada`s Supreme Court struck down the law as an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of speech. Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa then circumvented the ruling by invoking an unusual clause in the Canadian constitution that permits a province to exempt any of its laws from constitutional review.

The sign law, originally enacted in 1976 when the Parti Quebecois was in power, has long had particular resonance for Quebec`s majority of French-speakers. It represents an assertion of their right to preserve Quebec`s

``French face`` after generations of economic and political dominance by the minority Anglophones.

But in the rest of English Canada, Quebec`s sign law has come to symbolize a cavalier and hostile disregard for the rights of its minority English-speakers. Moreover, it underlined a point that many English Canadians had missed: that Quebec is less interested in seeing the rest of Canada become bilingual than it is in seeing Quebec become more French.

The sign law decision also aggravated other longstanding resentments over Quebec`s national power and influence. The province routinely receives much more in federal funds than it pays in federal taxes.

And the controversy has seriously jeopardized a proposed amendment to Canada`s constitution that was intended by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to bridge the Quebec-Canada divide once and for all.

The amendment, known as the Meech Lake accord, was signed by Mulroney and the premiers of Canada`s 10 provinces in April, 1987, but requires ratification by each of the provincial legislatures. At least two provinces have announced they are now against it.

The most important section of Meech Lake formally recognizes Quebec as a

``distinct society,`` conferring on the province unspecified powers to preserve and protect the French language. And it is those new powers that worry the amendment`s critics.